Crooked Branch (9781101615072)

by Cummins, Jeanine

  “She is not, you’re too hard on her.”

  I grip the diary hard in my hands. Leo’s mom died when he was seventeen. She was diabetic, and she more or less ate herself into a doughnut coma, from which she never recovered—speaking of emotionally healthy women. He and my mom have always loved each other, and even though he understands my exasperation with her, he can’t help but take her side from time to time. And it’s not even like I can really blame him. She is a tremendously charming woman. Just ask the receptionist at her accountant’s office! Everyone loves her. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel like she’s really mine.

  “She is vacant, Leo. You don’t understand.” There’s nothing I hate more than the sound of my own whininess, so I reach for a note of concession. “I know she could be worse.”

  Leo snorts. “You have no idea.”

  “But she could be better, too.” I revert to whining. “This is not the relationship I want to have with her. She’s totally closed off to me.”

  “She’s just a phone call away, Majella.”

  “She is in Florida,” I say, as if this is the grandest, most obvious proof that she’s unreachable. Why doesn’t he understand? “I’m just saying, it comes from somewhere, the way I’m feeling. We learn how to be parents by watching our mothers.”

  “Yes, and then we choose whether to emulate them or do things differently,” he argues.

  “Yes, that’s what sane people do,” I grant him. “But what if you can’t choose? What if it’s coded deep into your genetics, and you can’t outrun it? And what if I’m just part of some inescapable genetic cycle of failed nurturers, and I’m about to fuck up our baby, too?”

  I am crying again now, and Leo bites his lip. The poor man is utterly defeated. I feel so sorry for him. I’m terrified, in this moment, that he is wishing he married someone else. Someone more stable and light, someone more like I used to be. I reach for his hand, and I squeeze it, but not to reassure him. I wish I were that selfless. I’m afraid to let go.

  “You could never fuck up our baby,” he whispers.

  Please let that be true. He touches my face, and then we both look down at Emma, asleep on my legs. I’m so glad she’s not old enough to understand any of this. I hope I’m better by the time she can. I so want to be that strong, steady woman Leo thought he married. Didn’t I used to be that woman?

  “Leo?” I whisper, and now I am truly shaking, because against my better judgment, I’m about to confess something that I had no intention of telling him. I can feel the words unfurling inside me, and I wish I knew how to stop them, how to swallow them, but out they tumble, unbidden. “You know I love her, right? I do.”

  “Of course.”

  And then there’s a long gap of silence, when I think I might actually be able to thwart these words before they appear. I might be able to conquer them. But no.

  “I don’t know if it’s enough,” I whisper. “I don’t think I love her the way I’m supposed to.”

  The silence that descends over the room now is beastly. Heavy. I can feel it on my chest. Leo’s face is broken. He pushes breath up and out of his lungs. I can see his cheeks puff as the breath leaves his body, but there is still no sound. He takes the diary from me, thumbs through it without reading anything, and then stands up from the bed.

  “You should throw this fucking thing in the fire.”

  “What?”

  He’s shaking his head. “It’s ridiculous, you getting yourself into this kind of state over some stupid, prehistoric diary.”

  “It’s not about the diary. . . .” But he won’t listen. He’s found his comfortable scapegoat. He needs this to blame, instead of me. He is shaking it at me.

  “This has nothing to do with you, do you understand me? Nothing.” He is actually pacing, like some thwarted soap opera lover, and his voice is loud. He’s going to wake Emma. “Whatever crazy-ass thing some whackjob lady did in front of her kid some two hundred years ago has nothing to do with you.”

  Emma’s eyes pop open, and she immediately begins to cry. Leo stops in his tirade and tosses the book onto the bed at my feet. He reaches for her, but I get her first, lift her onto my shoulder. She stops crying, and it is a bona fide miracle. I kiss the side of her head. Leo watches us. His hands hang helplessly at his sides.

  “Look at you,” he whispers, and then he comes and holds us both for a long time. “I wish you could see what I see.”

  • • •

  I take a long shower before I head downstairs, and I expect Leo to be ready to walk out the door to work. Shoes on, jacket. But he’s not. He’s sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee, the PlayStation controller in his hand, and his socks up on the coffee table. Emma is doing tummy time on the yoga mat beside him.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for work?” I ask from the kitchen. I’m rummaging in the cabinet for a mug while I inspect the coffeemaker, as if my powers of deduction alone are powerful enough to tell whether it’s decaf.

  “It’s half-caf,” Leo says from the couch. “And I called out.”

  I have the coffeepot in my hand now, but I stop pouring midstream, and turn to him. “You what?”

  “I called out. I’ll probably go in later, for the dinner rush. Mario can handle the prep. Thought I’d spend the day with my girls.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  In the seven years I’ve known him, Leo has never called out of work. Not once. The idea that he would do it on a Saturday, on the restaurant’s busiest night, is actually unthinkable. He has worked through migraines, fevers, flu symptoms, and, one extremely foolhardy time, even food poisoning. Something is extremely suspicious here. Does he want me to believe he just called out on a whim? Just because he got a hankering for some family time? I turn back to my mug and fill it up before I join him on the couch. I sit on the far end, as far away from him as I can get. I look around the unfinished room.

  “Yeah, you wanna spend the day getting a jump on some of these projects, then?” I say. “Maybe we could install some of the wood flooring?”

  Our renovation efforts have come to a screeching halt since Emma was born. Steam curls up from my mug and around my face. I sip. I am laying an ambush. I am about to pounce.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says, focused on his game. The buttons click beneath his thumbs.

  “So what, you don’t trust me with her now? You can’t go to work and leave me alone with her?”

  He glances at me for just an instant, but it’s long enough to distract his on-screen quarterback, who throws an interception. Leo throws the controller down on the coffee table, and it hits his coffee mug, which sloshes.

  “You know what, Majella,” he says, standing up. “Maybe you are fucking crazy.” He grabs his coffee and stalks into the kitchen. “Is that what you want? Someone to confirm it for you?”

  I set my mug down on the table. I can’t tell who’s wrong. I draw my knees up in front of me, and it doesn’t hurt. My incision is painless. Maybe it’s becoming a scar. Leo gulps some coffee and dumps the rest into the sink. Then he comes back and stands in the doorway.

  “I just thought you could use a little extra support today,” he says. “You seemed like you were shook up. I know you’re having a hard time here, Majella, but I’m not going to be your punching bag. I’m trying to help.”

  I rest my elbows on my knees and nod my head. After a moment, he comes and sits back down on the couch, but not close to me.

  “Maybe you should call Dr. Zimmer,” he suggests.

  I’m astonished. Flabbergasted. Does he think I’m that unhinged? That I need to call my therapist for an emergency appointment?

  “It’s Saturday,” I answer lamely.

  He shrugs. I reach for my coffee. Sip. All I wanted to do was vent. Now I have killed my husband’s patience. I wish I could go back an hour, and unsay everything, back to a time just sixty minutes ag
o when he believed in me. Even though his faith was misguided, it had been a comfort, a hope. How had I won him over to my own doomed perspective so convincingly, so accidentally?

  “Maybe you should think about taking something,” he says quietly, and his words feel like an unwelcomed injection, a sharp prick that leaches beneath my skin.

  “Like happy pills?”

  “Just something to help balance your chemistry, until you’re feeling better. You’re not yourself at all.”

  He won’t look at me. This could be the most disappointed I have ever felt in my entire life. I have let everyone down. This is not the mother either of us expected me to be. This failure is incalculable. With monstrous effort, I push myself to my feet.

  “I’ll call Dr. Zimmer.”

  • • •

  I wear one of Leo’s baseball hats, and I pull it down low over my face so I can cry all the way to Dr. Zimmer’s office on the subway. When I get there, she is wearing Saturday clothes, some high-waisted jeans and Nikes, which totally throws me off. I wonder if I called her away from her kid’s soccer game or something, if my bad motherhood is having a knock-on effect, making her a bad mother, too—the kind of woman who abandons her child’s soccer game to go be with a patient instead. In my mind, I see her daughter scoring the winning goal, her hands held aloft as she celebrates, her brown ponytail swinging behind her as she searches the cheering sidelines for her absent mother.

  “I’m sorry to call you on a Saturday.”

  “It’s fine,” she says. “Part of the job.” She smiles at me, and I don’t remember for sure, but I feel like this is a first, too, that her smile is only enabled by the Nikes. “So what’s going on?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. Yesterday I had a good day. I mean, I went to the worst mommy-group in the world, but ended up going for coffee with one of the other moms, and it was cool. I had a good day with the baby, Emma was happy. She seems not to be crying as much these days. Everything was fine.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, remember that diary I told you about?”

  “The one from your Irish ancestor. During the famine?”

  “Yes.”

  She nods.

  “Well, I read more of it last night, and it was awful. It made me feel really awful. I think it gave me bad dreams.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “I don’t remember. But I woke up in a really wicked mood.”

  “So why do you think it was the diary? What did it say?”

  “She killed someone. This woman, my ancestor, killed another woman. She smashed her skull in with a cudgel.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Yeah, and she did it in front of her kid.”

  “Her own kid, or the victim’s kid?”

  “Her own kid. Her daughter.”

  “Well, I can see why that would disturb you.”

  “Yeah.” I rub my hands nervously along my thighs. “And I just hate that, I hate that I’m related to this person. I feel like it confirms all my worst fears about myself, as a mother.”

  Dr. Zimmer is nodding, frowning.

  “Like if this is the stock I come from, well, no wonder I’m coming unhinged. Maybe it’s just in me, to be like that.”

  “To be violent?” she asks carefully. “I’ve never heard you mention anything violent. That seems like quite the leap to make.”

  “I don’t know, maybe not violent,” I say. “But at least crazy. And a shitty mother.”

  “I notice you’re using pretty vivid language. Wicked. Unhinged. Crazy. Shitty. Is that how you’re really feeling about yourself?”

  I shrug. Then nod. Then whisper, “I kind of hate myself right now. I feel like I’m letting everyone down, like I’ve committed false advertising. Like Leo and I both thought I would be this wonderful, easy mother, and now I’m this instead.” My eyelids feel puffy and swollen, my nose completely blocked with tears. I am wretched. “Leo and I are at each other’s throats. I feel like I’ve exhausted his patience. I thought his patience was infinite, but I think I’ve found his threshold at last. He’s so fed up with me. He’s the one who suggested I call you this morning.”

  “Oh?” She raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t want to come in?”

  “I don’t know. He thinks I need to take something. Like a prescription.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  I fold myself over my knees and weep until I think I must finally be done weeping. Seriously. Good God. Dr. Zimmer says nothing. She’s still waiting for me to answer her question. Wasn’t that fresh round of uncontrollable sobbing answer enough?

  “I don’t want to take some fucking pills that are just going to turn off my brain, squelch my emotions. I want to learn how to handle them. How to cope.”

  “There are plenty of options today that are very light-handed,” she says. “You don’t have to be a zombie.”

  “But isn’t this normal, what I’m going through?” I ask. I so want it to be normal. “I mean yes, I’m sleep-deprived and I’m super-hormonal. I cry every ten seconds. But don’t lots of new moms feel like this?”

  “I don’t think you’re experiencing anything abnormal,” Dr. Zimmer assures me. “But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it? If it’s becoming more severe, a temporary prescription might really help.” She looks at me and smiles again, and for some reason, that makes me feel worse. “Part of the difficulty of being a new mother is the fact that your body chemistry is doing lots of crazy things, and that can make it harder to sleep, harder to focus. It can really take away your ability to function normally.”

  I look for a nail to bite, but I’ve already scalped them all. “Have you ever heard of a drug called Ativan?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not an antidepressant. It doesn’t change the way your brain functions. It simply helps with the relief of anxiety. It helps you relax.”

  “Like Valium?” I ask. “Or beer?”

  “Well, it’s lighter than Valium,” she answers, ignoring the beer remark. “It’s not something you take every day; it’s just the sort of thing that’s good to have in the medicine cabinet for days like this. When you’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious, it can help you achieve calm.”

  “Okay,” I say noncommittally.

  Dr. Zimmer stands up from her red chair and moves behind the desk I’ve never seen her use. Where is she going? When I said, “Okay,” I meant, “Okay, now I understand what Ativan is,” not, “Okay, I’d like some Ativan now, please.”

  “What about breast-feeding?” I ask, mostly as a stall tactic.

  Dr. Zimmer is flipping through her old-fashioned rotary Rolodex. I didn’t even know they made those things anymore.

  “I think it’s safe,” she says, stopping on the Ms. “But the prescribing doctor will go over all of that with you. There’s a guy right here in the building, Dr. Maledon, unless there’s someone else you’d rather use?”

  I shift uncomfortably in my seat and don’t answer her. I don’t even look up.

  “Majella, it won’t take you fifteen minutes. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “What if he doesn’t take my insurance?”

  “He takes your insurance.”

  “Oh.” How did she just happen to know that off the top of her head? How does she even remember who my insurance carrier is? What is she, some kind of insurance zealot? She interrupts the silent character assassination I am conducting against her by clearing her throat.

  “You don’t even have to take the medication, Majella,” she says then, with intractable rationale. “Sometimes, just knowing you have the option helps. It certainly can’t hurt, right?”

  Damn all these rigidly logical people in my life. They are so exasperating! She sits down behind the desk and awaits my verdict.r />
  “Okay,” I finally whisper, with deep, irrational shame.

  I cry quietly while she fixes an appointment for me with Dr. Maledon. Oh, calling his answering service was unnecessary because—joy of joys!—the doc just happens to be in his office until noon today, and no, he has no openings, but yes, he will squeeze me in because he is a stand-up guy, and it is his heroic vocation in life to save New York City from crazies like me.

  Dr. Zimmer locks up her office, and then directs me to Dr. Maledon’s office on the third floor. Fifty-five minutes later, I am standing on the subway platform at Third Avenue, waiting for the L train, with the crumpled Ativan prescription shoved deep into the back pocket of my jeans. I can feel it there.

  I get off the L train at Myrtle and Wyckoff, and hop on the almost-empty, late Saturday morning Q55 bus. I get off two stops before home so I can go to a pharmacy I’ve never used before, where no one knows me. I’m pretty sure the young, ponytailed pharmacist smirked when she saw my prescription. I wait on a hard plastic chair while she fills my prescription. My knees jiggle nervously beneath me. I text Leo: Be home soon. We need anything?

  After a few minutes, the phone beeps, and I check the messages, but there’s no text from Leo. Instead, a voice mail from a number I don’t recognize. Maybe Dr. Zimmer is just checking on me, to make sure I haven’t offed myself. I press play, hold the phone up to my ear.

  The first thing I hear is a baby crying, and then a door slams and the cry becomes muffled. Then, hurried footsteps and a breathless voice. Hi, Majella, it’s Jade from next door? I went for a coffee with you yesterday, after that soul-sucking mommy meetup? She pauses, and it seems like she’s distracted by something. My knees have stopped bouncing against the hard plastic chair and my body is stretched, motionless. I’m straining to hear her. The baby is still crying, but it sounds far away now. Jade’s voice is echoey, like she’s locked herself in a shower or a stairwell. Anyway so yeah, I just wanted to say hey. It was nice meeting you, and I thought maybe we could do it again sometime. Okay. There’s more noise in the background, and then nothing, like she’s hung up, or muted me. Then she’s back, and the baby is crying loud again. Okay, so just give me a call sometime.